***MEDIA RELEASE***
Opposition Mounting to Warrantless Seizure of DNA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 27, 2008
CONTACT:
Meredith Curtis, ACLU-MD
410-889-8555; media@aclu-md.org
ANNAPOLIS – As the troubling details and discriminatory ramifications of expanding DNA databanks become known, the ACLU of Maryland is encouraged that opposition is mounting to legislation that would allow for DNA collection from individuals who are arrested but not convicted of crimes. The Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland is the most recent group to decry the warrantless random seizure of genetic information promoted by bills pending in the Maryland General Assembly.
In announcing its opposition last Friday, the Legislative Black Caucus joins the Maryland State Conference of NAACP Branches, the Baltimore City Branch of the NAACP, the Prince George’s County Branch of the NAACP, the Maryland Chapter of the National Organization for Women, and the Maryland Innocence Coalition, in addition to the ACLU of Maryland. These groups point to the violation of the Fourth Amendment; they underscore the fact that DNA databanks overwhelmingly are comprised of African Americans and Latinos; and they emphasize that DNA profiles sweep completely innocent family members into the genetic dragnet.
Several bills are pending in the Maryland General Assembly to force the warrantless seizure of DNA from those arrested for various crimes. Governor Martin O’Malley has a proposal that would expand warrantless seizure of genetic information from those arrested for a crime of violence, for all degrees of burglary, and for breaking and entering a motor vehicle.
In its opposition letter to Governor O’Malley, the Legislative Black Caucus wrote: “The LBCM believes that expanding the database to include DNA from anyone who is arrested for certain crimes is an intrusive and unreasonable search conducted without the judicial scrutiny required by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
Said the Maryland Chapter of the National Organization for Women: "We must not be lulled into believing we are more secure with a forced DNA testing program than we would be with adequate crime prevention programs and laws that are enforceable. If we look at the current status of rape and assault investigations and convictions, using our over-burdened laboratories to test existing rape-kits, we will see how misleading this promise is."
The NAACP points to the disturbing implications of DNA dragnets for the African American community. In Maryland, and across the country, the “usual suspects” are overwhelmingly African American. For crimes of violence, blacks and Latinos are arrested at three times the rate as whites. In Maryland, for every white person in prison there are 6.2 African Americans. Although 27.9% of Maryland’s population is African American, 72.3% of Maryland’s prison population is black.
The DNA dragnet also traps within it many African Americans who have never been arrested or even suspected of any crime. Known DNA profiles are used to identify parents, children, siblings, and relatives whose profiles are not themselves in the database through “low stringency” or “familial” searching. Capitalizing on this, the government allows DNA databases to be searched for near-matches. DNA databanks have already become the tools of genetic surveillance of the African American community.[1]
Said Gerald G. Stansbury, President of the Maryland State Conference of NAACP Branches, commenting on the disproportionate arrest and incarceration of African Americans, “One disturbing consequence is that a DNA warehouse would permanently designate large numbers of black people and their family members as criminal suspects – ready to be rounded up anytime there is a crime.”
The Maryland Innocence Coalition rebuts claims that randomly expanded DNA databanks exonerate the innocent. Nearly every one of the over 200 DNA-based exonerations nationwide and in Maryland have been established by crime scene DNA. Law enforcement routinely resists efforts to use the vast DNA databanks they already have to establish innocence. Databank searches occur after exoneration has been proved. This resistance means that actual perpetrators often commit additional crimes because of failure to adequately test crime scene DNA, not because of limits to the DNA databank.
“The Fourth Amendment of our Constitution promises a society free from fear of government surveillance and intrusion,” said Cynthia Boersma, Legislative Director of the ACLU of Maryland. “DNA databanks simply sweep this kind of dragnet off the streets, masking its repugnancy in the scientific aura of DNA accuracy and CSI glamour.”
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[1] A recent paper by the Dean of the University of Maryland School of Law calls attention to the racial stigma that DNA research threatens to perpetuate unwittingly as a consequence of the racial bias that pervades the criminal justice system and that infects our forensic DNA databases. Karen Rothenberg & Alice Wang, The Scarlet Gene: Behavioral Genetics, Criminal Law, and Racial and Ethnic Stigma, 69 L.& CONTEMP. PROBS. 344, 352 (2006).